Hereward by James Wilde Read Free Book Online

punch sent a jolt of pain through Hereward’s head and neck.
    ‘What is your name?’ Redteeth repeated calmly.
    Hereward said nothing. Savage blows rained down on him, but he took it as he had taken every beating in his life, and there had been many. His left eye swelled shut, his lips turned to a pulp, blood streamed from his nose and his left ear throbbed so much he could hear nothing on that side. Redteeth asked again.
    ‘Why do you not tell him your name?’ Alric cried incredulously. ‘You told it to me in an instant. It is not a secret! You are only buying yourself more pain!’
    ‘My name …’ Hereward mumbled through his torn lips. ‘My name … is mine. It is what I have.’
    Redteeth nodded to Ivar once more.
    ‘His name is Hereward!’ Alric shouted. ‘There! You do not need to hurt him more!’
    ‘Hereward,’ Redteeth repeated. ‘That means nothing to me. Now … where are you from?’
    Unable to watch the punishment inflicted upon his companion, the young monk turned his head away, but he flinched with the sound of every blow. Hereward felt puzzled by his reaction. Why would anyone care?
    After a while, he floated free of the shackles of the world. The voices around him receded and he was in the fens, a boy, catching fish on a sun-drenched afternoon. He was stealing a gold cup from the abbot’s room to sell to buy mead with his friends. He was looking down on the torn body of Tidhild, her hand so pale against the blood.
    Icy water crashed against his face, shocking him alert.
    ‘Look at him,’ Alric said. ‘He is not human to suffer in silence so.’
    ‘We have only just begun,’ Redteeth replied. The Viking paced the house, flashing glances into the corners as if things waited there that no one else could see.
    When two of the men had stoked the hot embers in the hearth, Ivar placed a pair of iron tongs, a poker and his long knife in the flames. While they absorbed the heat, Redteeth addressed Alric, who was slumped in one corner, his head in his hands. ‘Christian man. You have converted many of my people to the Creed. They no longer talk of Odin hanging on Yggdrasil, but of Jesus on the Cross. You build churches in the old stone circles and in the sacred groves, and by the wells and the springs. That is how you lure them. I have heard your kind say your God is better than mine. Is that so?’
    Alric nodded.
    ‘Your ways are better?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Redteeth nodded slowly. ‘So a Christian man should not break a vow sworn in his God’s name?’
    Alric bowed his head.
    ‘Will your God forgive such a transgression? Will he wash away the stain of blood caused by such a crime? So many innocent deaths?’ Redteeth stepped forward and kicked the monk hard in the stomach. ‘If you had not run like a coward I would not have had to slaughter the people who sheltered you. Think on this in your final moments.’
    ‘Leave him,’ Hereward croaked.
    ‘You would prefer your own pain to his?’ Redteeth said. ‘Why, you must be a Christian too.’ The warriors all laughed loudly.
    At the Viking commander’s order, Ivar removed the poker from the fire and held it close to Hereward’s ribs. The Mercian gritted his teeth as his flesh bloomed under the searing heat. When Redteeth leaned in to whisper, Hereward could smell his enemy’s meaty breath and the vinegar reek of his sweat. ‘Why would you dare to risk offending me? What lies in your head?’
    Hereward looked Redteeth in the eye and grinned. ‘You will never know.’
    Responding to a nod from his leader, Ivar pressed the hot poker to Hereward’s side. Pain lanced through him, and the stink of his own sizzling flesh rose up to his nose. His roar tore his throat, but it was the sound of triumph, not defeat.
    ‘Look at his eyes!’ Alric shouted. ‘You waste your time! I tell you, he is not a man – he is the Devil!’
    ‘He is a man,’ Redteeth replied with a shrug. ‘And we will find his humanity, given time. Perhaps when we cut his